It's no secret that the president often lacks in ideological consistency. Some would say that contributed to his success in the 2016 general election. So for those not too proud to play the game, it's a wide-open field for trying to steer the administration's prerogatives in one ideological direction or the other.

That's not necessarily a bad thing, depending on who you ask. But it does make every day in the little-understood, bureaucratic underworld of policy shop shenanigans a veritable knife fight.

The latest entrant is the Committee on the Present Danger. Represented by former White House strategist Steve Bannon and Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy, this is third resuscitation of a foreign policy interest group that has existed in manifold forms since the advent of the Cold War.